Examples of Productivity increase with SSD use...

[tilleroftheearth]

Interesting that in the conclusion of this article;
See:
System Builder Marathon: TH's $2000 Hand-Picked Build : The Better Way To Spend $2000?

a major online publisher like Tom's Hardware admits that:
Quote:
"Because we always strive to prove the ultimate value of all three systems in the fairest possible manner, GeForce GTX 480 SLI joins SSD drives in the “too much cost, too little benchmark benefit” class of hardware that’s rarely (if ever) used in the System Builder Marathon series."

Note: bolded text by me.

I've been saying this since first being exposed to SSD's over a year ago.

I've actually gone further and said that benchmarks do not mirror how the SSD performs over time in any type real world usage situation.

Worse, all the benefits of a supposedly faster storage subsystem fails to materialize with any actual productivity increase. (ie. actually completing work/projects significantly faster).

Although SSD's are nominally faster than mechanical HD's, their strengths do not yet allow them to take the 'Best in Class' title when $$$$ are taken into consideration, capacity is taken into consideration and especially when a mechanical HD like the Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid is used as a 'baseline' to the SSD real world comparisions.

What SSD's offer to provide is 'snap' (though most do not...) over a mechanical HD (at least not a modern and properly setup and maintained mechanical HD). Actual productivity benefits are few and far between (with SSD's).

The reason?

Work/(productivity) is not done on a storage subsystem - it is performed soley in RAM and driven by the processor. The storage subsystem is only a factor when we can produce continous amounts of 'finished' work to save (such as video) and even then, the current top SSD's (I'm looking at you here SandForce) is not capable of effectively dealing with those type of situations in a manner which shows a sustained and continued productivity benefit over mechanical HD's.


Does anybody have any 'proof' where SSD's helped actually increase their productivity?


(and not a situation where a notebook is simply needed to be booted multiple times per day to use 'lighter' programs... I'll concede that boot up time 'scores' do show (the top) SSD's as clear winners - especially as more and more complex programs are installed on the system and are needed to load at least partially at each boot...


but the productivity comparison that I'm interested in is comparing an optimized mechanical HD system using apps that taxes the system as fully as possible vs. the identical system with an SSD).

Looking forward to an enlightening (and hopefully civilized) discussion.

Thanks.

[othonda]

The two biggest real world gains I see with my SSD are the faster boot times (my system boots in about 17 seconds) and the load times in FS9. It would take typically 45 or more seconds to load a flight with a mechanical HDD, now it’s around 10 seconds with SSD. Firefox is another app that shows a real improvement in boot up time with an SSD. I do like how fast everything open with the SSD, and the overall snappy feel.

As far as price to performance ratio for me it is worth it. This part of the argument is really subjective based on individual needs and preferences.

Most people will probably side on the no it’s not worth it, and that’s fine as long as they respect the other side of the argument as well.

That’s my quick 2 cents worth

[tilleroftheearth]

othonda,

thanks for your input.

I do respect your argument fully - I had forgotten how slow Flight Simulator was to load - and you're right - an SSD there is a huge improvement.

I guess any app/utility that relies solely/mostly on read speed will be benefitted with an SSD - but as you said, whether the price was worth the performance will be up to the individual.

I'm still waiting to see (eagerly, I might add) some proof that SSD's add more than 'snappiness' to a system.

What I hope to glean is narrowing down the factors (SSD/platform/apps/???) that contribute to an SSD giving a true 'WOW!' feeling across the board over a mechanical/hybrid HD).

[TANWare]

For personal use, no it has not benefited myself. Where I can see these actually creating value is in customer service workstations. Where a rep may have to take 10 minutes to reboot it may only take 2 when there is a system issue. Also there a rep accesses multiple program applets hat are constantly loading and unloading from the system etc.

While you say it is only a few seconds saved if you can handle a call in 54 seconds compared to 60 your rep gets to handle essentially 10% more calls daily. This makes for less manpower for volume calling, a more satisfying caller experience, possibly lower hold times along with a host of other bennefits.

For general consumers the SSD has little to no cost bennefits. I will not argue that at all. It is a personal user experience and what you want from your system. Just like I have a 9800m GTS and it is overclocked. I don't need it but happen to have it and actually like it, while rarely used it is always there for me.

I can tell you though I get to enjoy the experience of my SSD much more often than my GPU. Especially wneh cruising the net etc. While agreed alot also is bandwidth dependent the system caches alot of small files and the SSDs are ideal for this. It truly makes a fat pipe to the web really work for you.....

[Althernai]

The main differences I noticed from the SSD of a desktop I built last year are faster boot times, faster initial application load times and faster install times for all software and firmware. The difference in all of these was very large (a factor of 2 or more) and since this machine gets turned on and off almost every day, this is important.

That said, for a desktop, it doesn't make sense to choose between having a lot of storage and having fast storage unless you really need to have a lot of huge programs installed on the system drive. The desktop I built had the 80GB Intel G2 paired with a 1TB HDD. It was a fairly cheap machine -- roughly $1K (including the display and Windows 7 Professional) with the SSD being one of the more expensive components. I paid $215 for it and got a $21.50 rebate 3 months later which took it down to 2nd most expensive (behind the $200 display).

[othonda]

The WOW factor that you talk about for me is real, Let me give you some perspective.

My work machine is an old P4 running at 2.8GHz, with a standard mechanical hard drive. I use this machine everyday for all kinds of apps, Word, Excel, Printed circuit board viewers, Spice simulations, Photoshop, AS400, etc… This computer takes forever to boot and to load some of my more demanding apps. My old laptop the Asus G1 was my primary home computer for 3 ½ years till I got my Sager, and it’s not much faster than my work computer booting or using the same types if apps. I hope to get an upgraded machine next year, but even then I will be hard pressed to get anything even considered mid range let alone high end.

But when I go home and use my Sager Laptop, I always get a big smiling grin of how fast as a complete system it is. Booting and loading, everything just snaps open.

[HTWingNut]

I agree with what tilleroftheearth is asking. I, too, would like to see benchmarks that more accurately represent real-world tasks and more information on real-world benefits.

Personally, I haven't seen much benefit of an Intel 80GB G2 over the WD Raptor it replaced in my desktop. As a matter of fact, I've spent more time trying to get it to work "right" that it has become more of a pain in my butt than it's worth. I'm awfully close to ripping it out of there and replacing it with a new 150GB Velociraptor.

That being said, the Vertex 2 in my laptop is insanely fast. I use my laptop for probably 80% of my tasks and gaming, so I guess that's a good thing, and worth it IMHO. However, there's a lot of compromise. For a laptop you have to compromise capacity for speed because of the costs of these SSD's and most laptops 15" and under have only a single HDD bay. I had to compromise my optical drive for a second HDD drive for storage.

Sure it's a personal preference, but I also think the companies can do a much better job at educating the public on the details of their drives instead of shoveling bull down our throats telling us how beneficial it is to spend four to five times that of a traditional hard drive without sharing details (like idle time garbage collection, recommended end user maintenance and OS configuration, etc).

[Hayte]

Productivity is a loaded term if there ever was one because whilst fast computers can help you to be more productive, it is still possible for you to be highly unproductive even if you have a fast computer. You can for instance waste alot of the resources at your disposal. This is an issue of work habit and expertise so lets elaborate. I've been writing and producing music using computers on and off for about 5 years. In that time I have owned 3x computers.

I started with:
Pentium 4 1.6ghz, 512mb RAM, 80gb hdd

About a year in I replaced that with this:
AMD X2 3800+ (socket 939), 1gb RAM, 160gb hdd

About 3 weeks ago, I finally replaced it with this:
Core i7 740QM, 6gb RAM, 120gb ssd + 500gb hdd

Now, despite doing everything music wise through a computer for 5 years and despite a 12 fold increase in system memory and who knows what increase in cpu speed, I can't say my songs are 12 times more complex or 12 times better or I'm getting 12 times as much done.

I never used to do real time convolution because that was frankly nuts way back when. I always used to use Super Impulse Reverb (SIR) offline because it used to crush my cpu and eat up all my RAM with long impulse responses and that meant I couldn't do much else once I'd maxed out my PC and it was stuttering all over the place. Now, I can run multiple instances of SIR in realtime and my computer is still telling me to bring it on. And so with that extra leeway there is the tendency to become wasteful. Just because you can run 5x instances of SIR when a placeholder will do until rendering time doesn't mean its a good idea or that its an efficient use of cpu resources. The first thing I have to acknowledge is that I have more PC now than I ever really need and that the biggest limiting factor in my own productivity is my own work habit.

But ssds right? The thing I noticed first when I got an ssd was how silent it was. The hdd activity light was going like mad and...no sound. It was actually jarring because I'm used to the whirring sound of the plater and the ticking noise you get whenever you access the disk, whenever you hit your pagefile, whenever you boot up and shut down and open and close apps.

Find a way to eliminate the cpu fan and I'll finally be able record acoustic guitar with both my computer and a mic within arms reach. This way I won't have to worry about throwing away takes because of fan noise in the mic feed and I won't have to walk across the room to hit stop/start/record everytime I botch a take.

I guess I could practice guitar more instead so I botch less takes but then we are back to work habit and expertise.

[Trottel]

Find a way to eliminate the cpu fan and I'll finally be able record acoustic guitar with both my computer and a mic within arms reach. This way I won't have to worry about throwing away takes because of fan noise in the mic feed and I won't have to walk across the room to hit stop/start/record everytime I botch a take.

It's called a desktop. Big heatsink with 120mm fan spinning silently.

[crazycanuk]

It's called a desktop. Big heatsink with 120mm fan spinning silently.

or desktop with watercooling and the rad, reservoir and 120MM fans in a closet or a next room. almost no noise at all, just some minor electronics hum if your ear is right next to the board